Agreed, Microsoft patching is nowhere close to what a true 24x7 mission critical OS should be. Requiring reboots is ridiculous (Novell Netware didn't, even for kernel patches, much less mainframe OS's). Not having a good, reliable, clean uninstall for all patches is also completely contrary to reliable operation: "What is your strategy in case of issues" being "Hope or reinstall with lots of downtime" isn't a good option.

That said, does anyone know of a more comprehensive way within SQL Server to determine what patches are installed at the OS level than the very basic:

CREATE TABLE #xp_msver

(

id int,

Name varchar(128),

Internal_Value int,

Character_Value varchar(128)

);

INSERT INTO #xp_msver

EXEC master.dbo.xp_msver;

SELECT Character_Value FROM #xp_msver WHERE Name = 'WindowsVersion'

DROP TABLE #xp_msver

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('ProductVersion'), SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel')